Fair enough: long-term prisoners talk about their sentence

No abstract available

Book review: Young Offenders: Crime, Prison and Struggles for Desistance

No abstract available

The Housing Meltdown: Why Did It Happen in the United States?

The crisis enveloping global financial markets since August 2007 was triggered by actual and prospective credit losses on US mortgages. Was the United States just unlucky to have been the first to experience a housing crisis? Or was it inherently more susceptible to one? I examine the limited international evidence available, to ask how the boom- bust cycle in the US housing market differed from elsewhere and what the underlying institutional drivers of these differences were. Compared with other countries, the United States seems to have: built up a larger overhang of excess housing supply; experienced a greater easing in mortgage lending standards; and ended up with a household sector more vulnerable to falling housing prices. Some of these outcomes seem to have been driven by tax, legal and regulatory systems that encouraged households to increase their leverage and permitted lenders to enable that development. Given the institutional background, it may have been that the US housing boom was always more likely to end badly than the booms elsewhere.Housing construction; Housing prices; Mortgage delinquencies; Mortgage markets; Subprime

Housing and Housing Finance: The View from Australia and Beyond

This paper draws together themes from work at the RBA, other national central banks, the BIS and elsewhere on recent developments in housing and housing finance. The general conclusion is that financial and macroeconomic developments have increased the demand for the stock of housing. Because the stock of housing is inherently slow to adjust, this has increased its relative price. Although this is a global trend, individual country institutions have affected outcomes, sometimes in ways that are not obvious. The resulting expansion in both sides of the household balance sheet is an important development for policy-makers to monitor, but it is probably not of itself a cause of financial instability.housing; housing finance; economic geography; cross-country

The impact of family policy packages on fertility trends in developed countries.

We examine how far fertility trends respond to family policies in OECD countries. In the light of the recent fertility rebound observed in several OECD countries, we empirically test the impact of different family policy settings on fertility, using data from 18 OECD countries that spans the years 1982 to 2007. Our results confirm that each instrument of the family policy package (paid leave, childcare services and financial transfers) has a positive influence, suggesting that the addition of these supports for working parents in a continuum during the early childhood is likely to facilitate parents' choice to have children. Policy levers do not have similar weight, however: in-cash benefits covering childhood after the year of childbirth and the coverage of childcare services for children under age three have a larger potential influence on fertility than leave entitlements and benefits granted around childbirth. Our findings are robust once controlling for birth postponement, endogeneity, time lagged fertility reactions and for different national contexts, such as economic development, female employment rates, labour market insecurity and childbearing norms.family policies; fertility; demographic economics; female employment; economics of gender

Does economic development drive the fertility rebound in OECD countries?

We examine how far changes in fertility trends are related to ongoing economic development in OECD countries. In the light of the inverse J-shaped relationship between the human development index (HDI) and total fertility rates that was recently found by Myrskylä, Kohler and Billari (2009), we single out the impact of economic development on fertility. We empirically test the hypothesis of a convex impact of GDP per capita on fertility, using data from the OECD area that spans the years 1960 to 2007. We test the robustness of our findings by controlling for birth postponement and for different income distribution patterns. By designating a clear turning point in the relationship between economic development and fertility, we find that economic development is likely to induce a fertility rebound, but is not sufficient to lift fertility to a significantly higher level in all OECD countries. Country-specific factors explain why countries with similar GDP per capita levels achieve significantly lower or higher fertility rates than the estimated baseline, however. By decomposing GDP per capita into several variables, we identify female employment as the main factor impacting fertility, behind GDP variations. The positive association between the increase in female employment and fertility rates suggests a key role played by the changes in norms and institutions supporting the combination of work and family that go along with the process of economic development.demographic economics; fertility; economic development; female employment; economics of gender

Commercial Property and Financial Stability - An International Perspective

Commercial property and property development have historically posed a greater direct risk to financial institutions’ balance sheets than have housing and mortgage markets. A number of factors contribute to this: banks’ commercial property lending is concentrated in loans for construction and development, which tend to be risky; imbalances can build up further because construction lags are longer; and incentives to avoid default are weaker for borrowers in the commercial property sector than they are for home loan borrowers. Conditions in global commercial property markets have been especially challenging in the current cycle.banks; commercial property; financial stability; loan losses

Housing Construction Cycles and Interest Rates

Housing investment is one of the most cyclical components of GDP. Much of that cyclicality stems from the sector’s sensitivity to interest rates, but it is also possible that construction lags generate intrinsic cyclicality in this sector. Although the housing sector is generally considered to be more interest-sensitive than the economy as a whole, the degree of this sensitivity seems to vary between countries and through time. In this paper, we model the housing markets in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada using a structural three-stage least-squares system. We document the variations in the housing sector’s cyclicality and sensitivity to movements in interest rates, and attempt to determine the underlying causes of these differences.cycles; housing construction; interest rates